Glockenklang und Chorgesang. Chor der Engel. Christ ist erstanden! Mängel umwanden. Faust. Welch tiefes Summen, welch ein heller Ton 390 Zieht mit Gewalt das Glas von meinem Munde? Verkündiget ihr dumpfen Glocken schon 400 Des Osterfestes erste Feierstunde? Ihr Chöre, singt ihr schon den tröstlichen Gesang, Chor der Weiber. Mit Spezereien Hatten wir ihn gepflegt, Hatten ihn hingelegt; Tücher und Binden Reinlich umwanden wir, Ach! und wir finden Christ nicht mehr hier. Chor der Engel. Christ ist erstanden! Faust. Was sucht ihr, mächtig und gelind, 410 Ihr Himmelstöne, mich am Staube? Klingt dort umher, wo weiche Menschen sind. Die Botschaft hör' ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Das Wunder ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind. zu jenen Sphären wag' ich nicht zu streben, Und doch, an diesen Klang von Jugend auf gewöhnt, 420 Da klang so ahnungsvoll des Glockentones Fülle, Trieb mich, durch Wald und Wiesen hinzugehn, Fühlt' ich mir eine Welt entstehn. Dieß Lied verkundete der Jugend muntre Spiele, Erinnrung hält mich nun, mit kindlichem Gefühle, 430 tönet fort, ihr süßen Himmelslieder! 440 450 Sind wir zum Leide da. Schmachtend uns hier zurück, Meister, dein Glück! Chor der Engel. Christ ist erstanden Aus der Verwesung Schooß. Reißet von Banden Freudig euch los! Thätig ihn preisenden Wonne verheißenden, The scene which follows forms a striking and obviously intentional contrast to the last. Easter-Sunday, the earliest bells of which festival deterred Faust from suicide, has here developed into full holiday afternoon; and gay groups and couples of the townsfolk saunter to and fro, debating the respective claims of the various suburban attractions— the Mill, the Jägerhaus, the Burgdorf. The scene, as described, is said to bear a certain resemblance to the environs of Frankfort, Goethe's birthplace and childhood's home: however this may be, it is a typically German holiday scene; students, citizens with their daughters, servant-girls, beggars, and soldiers; sauntering, ogling, quarrelling, gossiping, and singing; and in their midst the figure of Faust, attended by Wagner. The beauty of the dawning spring, the gay crowd, the sense of freedom and merriment, have banished, in Faust, the gloom of melancholy; here he feels himself one of his kind, a man with human pleasures and sympathies. To Wagner, on the other hand, it is all vulgar and unintellectual trifling; he would fain back to his manuscripts and parchments. Some of the peasants, mindful of the days when pestilence was among them, and Faust, with his father, strove to banish the foe with medicine and prayer, crowd round him with affectionate gratitude; he pledges them courteously, and passes on with Wagner to a solitary stone, and there recounts to his companion the events of those days, his father's quaint medical and alchemical studies, and how the drugs they administered, though well-nigh as fatal as the disease which they willed to cure, won them the simple gratitude of simple men. Wagner cannot comprehend his compunction at these memories-he had done his best to cure, following his father's recipes; what more can man do? he is wiser now; his posterity may be wiser still. But the old mood has partially returned to Faust; to him all his past benevolence seems only a mark of failure; how often, he moralises, are we tempted to act on halfknowledge, and how seldom are we able to put what we really know to practical use. But these saddening thoughts pass from him as he raises his eyes to the setting sun, and pours out the noblest of all "songs before sunset"—an impassioned monologue to the departing god; whom he fain would follow beyond the sunset and over the new world; pressing westward, like Dante's Ulysses (Inf. c. 26), in pursuit of virtue and knowledge. The lark at morn, the eagle soaring at noon-day above the mountains, the slow homeward wings of the heron at evening—all remind him of the yearning of the inner spirit to aspire, upwards and onwards. To Wagner all this seems fantastic-what are woods, skies, and birds, to him who can retire to his warm ingle, his books, his manuscripts? These, Faust rejoins, are the pleasures that bind the spirit to earthand he himself, like Wagner, knows them well; but in his breast there is another and adverse yearning, which, let Wagner pray never to know! the yearning to struggle upwards through mists of earth, to regions lying betwixt heaven and earth; fields of new existence, and more spiritual beings. To Wagner this appears a desire to invoke the spirits of the windsthe biting darts of the North, the dry dusty heat of the South and East, the wet influences of the West. Very noxious are they, these weather spirits; at the very thought of them, the evening has grown chill and dark; were it not well to retire homeward? At this moment, Faust fixes his eyes on a moving object in the stubble hard by; a black poodle coursing round and round, but seeming to the eye of Faust to leave, wherever he moves, a trail of fire. This is invisible to Wagner, who views the creature with a dull interest, as one that has lost its master; its circling and springing, by which it seems, to the magic-stricken brain of Faust, to be weaving mystic toils to ensnare him, are to Wagner mere signs of its training, its fawning timidity. Eventually he wins his master to this view, and they pass in together, accompanied by the poodle, at the gate of the town. Vor dem Thor. Spaziergänger aller Art ziehen hinaus. Einige Handwerksbursche. Warum denn dort hinaus ? Andre. Wir gehn hinaus auf's Jägerhaus. Die Ersten. Wir aber wollen nach der Mühle wandern. Ein Handwerksbursch. Ich rath' euch, nach dem Wasserhof zu gehn. Zweiter. Der Weg dahin ist gar nicht schön. Die Zweiten. 460 Was thust denn du ? Ein Dritter. Ich gehe mit den andern. Vierter. Nach Burgdorf kommt herauf; gewiß dort findet ihr Und Händel von der ersten Sorte. Fünfter. Du überlustiger Gesell, Juckt dich zum drittenmal das Fell? Ich mag nicht hin, mir graut es vor dem Orte. Dienstmädchen. Nein, nein! ich gehe nach der Stadt zurück. |